Globalization, Approaches to

There are many different approaches to the study of globalization, testifying to the diversity and vitality of the field of global studies. The diversity of these approaches is not easy to categorize, however, in part because of the intellectual climate in which most of the studies of globalization have emerged.

Studies of globalization and, more generally, studies in the broad and loosely defined field of global studies did not become conscious of themselves as such until the 1990s; and by then the direct-line lineages of classic social theory had either been broken or segmented. The social sciences and humanities were in the midst of a retreat from grand theory. There was a growing suspicion, in part influenced by a poststructuralist turn, of any generalizing theoretical explanations of particular phenomena. This suspicion was paralleled by a claim made by some that the postmodern condition could be characterized by the end of grand narratives of all kinds: nationalism, socialism, liberalism, and by implication, globalism. Although in the past, approaches to any theoretical field could be comfortably organized according to three foundational considerations—theoretical lineage, scholarly discipline, and normative orientation—this was changing. By the end of the 20th and into the early 21st century, those kinds of considerations remained useful by way of background orientation, but the pattern of approaches was becoming less obvious and with more crossovers.

There is an irony in this retreat from generalizing theory that is important to note. It concerns a paradox that is yet to be explained. At the same time that generalizing theory lost its hold, a generalizing category of social relations gripped the imagination of both academic analysts and journalistic commentators—this, of course, was the category of “the global.” In this emerging imaginary, globalization was understood as a process of social interconnection, a process that was in different ways connecting people across planet Earth. Globalization as a practice and subjectivity connecting the (global) social whole thus became the standout object of critical enquiry. In other words, globalization demanded generalizing attention at the very moment that residual ideas that an all-embracing theory might be found to explain such a phenomenon was effectively dashed. This has profound consequences for the nature of globalization theory and how we might understand different approaches.

This entry begins with the early approaches to globalization in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and then tracks across several different frameworks in which the various approaches to globalization can be ordered. Those different frameworks are simply different ways of describing the explosion of writings during the past two or three decades. Certain individual contributions have been highlighted, but the genealogy could have mentioned dozens and dozens of others.